This invention relates to facsimile machines for printing documents with ordered edges, and more particularly to a facsimile machine that selectively prints all documents with common edges aligned, or successive documents with alternating top edges first, then bottom edges first, etc. (Depending on the context, the word "document" refers to a single page or to all of the pages in a single document constituting the same fax transmission.)
Facsimile technology is highly developed, and facsimile machines enjoy widespread use. My previous invention U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/972,611 filed Nov. 6, 1992 and application Ser. No. 08/111,544 filed on Aug. 25, 1993 by Peter Crosby now U.S. Pat. No. 5,311,607 are directed to solving what is a relatively mild annoyance. The problem has to do with the fact that when transmitting documents by facsimile, there is no uniformity among users in whether the top of a document is sent first as opposed to the bottom. While most people send the top first, many do not. At the receiving site, especially if a machine has been receiving transmissions all night, a person looking through a stack of received documents in the morning (for example, in an office where the first one in scans all of the received documents to see if there are any urgent matters) has to look at documents some of which are right side up and some of which are upside down, but with no organized pattern to the alignment of the pages. Accordingly, a fax machine having the ability to provide a user with documents all in one orientation (to facilitate a review), or in alternating orientations to distinguish between successive single-page or multi-page documents would be of benefit.